


Love is a Dangerous Pastime

by aron_kristina



Category: Sarah Jane Adventures
Genre: Bisexuality, Community: helpbrazil2011, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-05
Updated: 2011-05-05
Packaged: 2017-10-19 01:00:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/195149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aron_kristina/pseuds/aron_kristina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rani doesn't know if she's being greedy, but she can't choose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love is a Dangerous Pastime

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sleepscribbling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleepscribbling/gifts).



> Written for sleepcribbling who bought this in the helpbrazil2011 auctions.  
> Title from "I want to sing" by Regina Spektor. Beta by C.

Sometimes, when Rani looks at Luke, she can see that awkward boy. The geek. The one who wasn’t born, but made, the one who had to learn everything from scratch. She didn’t know him then, but she has heard the stories, from Clyde and Sarah Jane, and from Luke himself.

When she got to know Luke he was a boy who was a bit too intelligent for his own good, but not more awkward than most teenage boys. When she kisses him though, she can feel the hesitance he shows, not really normal even if it’s your first kiss. He clearly knows what to do, but he does it strangely. In the wrong order, or too much in the right order. Rani breaks off the kiss. She looks at Luke, who still has his eyes closed. He opens them slowly. In that moment he looks so lost, like he has no idea what he’s supposed to do now, but is painfully aware that he doesn’t know. She gently puts her hands on his cheeks and kisses him again.

*

She wants to ask someone about this, but she doesn’t know who. She tried asking her mother, but that had been a disaster. Gita had started saying something about helping Rani find a good husband if she couldn’t find one herself, and Rani had only been saved by Haresh reminding Gita that she didn’t believe in arranged marriage, after which the episode was never spoken of again.

She wants to ask Sarah Jane, but she’s not sure how to do it. And she doesn’t want Sarah Jane to figure out what and who she’s talking about.

*

Sometimes she and Clyde lie on his bed, just breathing together. It’s not like she doesn’t like sex with him, even if it’s fumbly, and clumsy, and over just as it’s getting good, but she also likes the quiet moments. Looking at each other. Touching with no purpose at all. Just holding on.

She tries to talk to him once, about Luke, but he doesn’t answer her, and the next day he pretends she didn’t say anything.

*

Luke knows about her and Clyde, because everyone knows about her and Clyde. It’s Official, and all, and it’s changed the dynamic of the group. Clyde and Rani are a Couple, and Luke is just their friend, and by all the rules of society this should make him less important. Clyde and Rani should always be each other’s first priority, but it doesn’t work like that. Luke can never be less important to them, no matter what society says. Society also claims there are no aliens, so society can hang for all she cares.

Maybe the dynamic hasn’t changed that much.

*

She expects Luke to pull way, to protest, but he doesn’t. He kisses her, gaining confidence slowly. He’s a quick learner, always has been, and by the time she’s lying down on the bed he’s taken control. She doesn’t mind, lets him explore her body until she gets impatient. Then she pushes him down and gets on top of him, setting the pace and fucking him hard. It takes him two tries to figure out how she wants her clit touched, and then he makes her come three times. She’s exhausted by the end of it, and they fall asleep together.

*

There is an alien, and there is running, and afterwards they all go to Sarah Jane’s house to have tea and talk about what happened. They stay up late, and after Sarah Jane has gone to bed they stay in Luke’s room, talking and laughing, and they fall asleep together on Luke’s bed.

*

She gathers her courage one day to talk to Sarah Jane. They’re sitting in the living room, tea cups in their hands, and the conversation has faded out into comfortable silence.

“Is it greedy to love two people at once?” Rani says. Sarah Jane looks thoughtful.

“Well, love is a strange thing,” she says eventually, which is not the answer Rani is looking for. “You can love people in so many different ways. You love both your parents, for example.”

“Yes, but if I _love_ love two people at the same time, is that wrong?” Rani asks.

“How do you feel about this?” Sarah Jane asks. “Why is this a problem for you?”

“Why isn’t it for you?” Rani says, a bit shocked at Sarah Jane’s answer.

“Oh, when you’ve seen so many different cultures you get a certain outlook on things. Does it make you happy, loving these people?”

“Yes,” Rani says, because while it makes her feel anxious, and guilty, and conflicted, it also makes her happy.

“And does it make the other two persons happy?”

“Yes,” Rani says, and then thinks about it. “No. I don’t know.”

“Then maybe that is what you need to figure out, not if you’re being greedy,” Sarah Jane says, and they sink into comfortable silence again.

*

Clyde likes going down on her. Well, to be honest Clyde likes most things having to do with sex, but he especially likes going down on her. She’s not sure if it’s the taste, or keeping his mouth occupied, or the fact that she likes it so much that he likes, or if it’s some kind of combination.

Rani herself likes it when Clyde is deep inside her, and when he comes, and all those times he’s breathless and tells her he loves her. She’s still not convinced she’s not being greedy about love.

*

Sarah Jane looks at her now, not disapproving, but considering, as if trying to figure out who the other person is. Or maybe if that other person is fine with it. She doesn’t, as far as Rani knows, study Clyde or Luke the way she studies Rani, but then, there are always plenty of opportunities to watch them when Rani can’t see it. For all she knows Sarah Jane has already asked Luke about it, and Luke has told her everything. He does that, tells his mother things that no ordinary teenager would tell his mum.

It bothers her a bit, that Sarah Jane might know, and that she might disapprove after all. It bothers her that she doesn’t know what Luke wants, or what Clyde wants, that she can’t get either of them to talk to her. She sometimes wonders if it’s just sex, but really, she knows deep down it isn’t.

*

There is a party, and there is drinking, and she has Luke and Clyde by her sides, and she just wants, wants them both, can’t decide which one she’d rather have, because the sum is so much more than the parts.

They end up in a sofa, and she kisses Clyde, but when Luke stands up to go she grabs his hand. She fucks Clyde, and Luke sits next to them, looking awkward but unable to leave, because she wants him there. She grabs him and drags him closer, and he touches her, her breasts, her stomach, her clit.

The morning after, when she throws up everything she’s ever eaten, she feels guilty.

*

When Rani was a kid, her grandmother had asked her if she didn’t want to find a good man and move back to India. Her dad had replied that there would be no men, good or otherwise, until she was much older. Gran had smiled, and said that she was well on her way to being married when she was Rani’s age.

“But this is England, gran,” Rani had said. “You’re not allowed to marry until you’re eighteen. They said so in school.”

“And look at what that has done. Abortions and I don’t know what!” gran had said, and then dad had changed the subject.

Later, when she was going to sleep, gran had come in and sat on the chair next to her bed.

“Gran, what are abortions?” Rani had asked.

“Something bad that grown-ups do,” gran had answered. “You just find yourself a good man, and you won’t have to worry about that.”

The next morning she had asked her dad, and he had explained, using clinical terms, what an abortion was. Rani hadn’t understood what it had to do with finding a good man, but she didn’t ask her dad about it.

*

These days Rani thinks it’s less about finding a good man and maybe more about being good yourself. And about luck, chance, call it what you will. Condoms break, and she’s never been more aware of that than when she’s standing in line at the pharmacy, waiting to pay for emergency contraceptives, and a pregnancy test, just in case. Clyde had offered to come with her, but she wanted to go alone.

This isn’t an abortion, not even close to, really, but it wouldn’t have mattered to her gran. Interfering with Nature’s intended course is bad. She has considered an IUD, which her gran would have thoroughly disapproved of too, but she can’t live her life according to gran. And she never wants to be in this situation later and not even know whose child she’s not having.

*

“Does it bother you?” Rani asks Luke when they’re not really doing anything, just hanging around. Clyde is off helping his mum with something, but Sarah Jane is home, so they haven’t even been snogging.

“Does what bother me?” Luke says. He’s lying on his bed, shirtless because of the heat, and Rani would really like to fuck him. But she can’t.

“Me and Clyde,” she says, and looks away. Luke is silent for a while.

“No,” he says eventually. “Should it?”

“I think so,” Rani says. “I’m cheating on him. Really, I’m...” She wants to talk about it, and this is the only person she can talk to, since Clyde refuses, but she doesn’t know what to say.

“Are you?” Luke asks. He sounds like someone’s psychologist, and Rani almost finds it funny, except she finds it horrible.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re fucking,” she says, reverting to sarcasm, for lack of something sensible to say.

“He knows that. So it’s not cheating,” Luke says, still calm, so calm it makes Rani’s blood boil.

“How does that make it not cheating?” she says, still mindful of Sarah Jane and trying to keep quiet.

“Would you think it was cheating if he had sex with me?”

Rani isn’t sure what to say. Sometimes Luke is really good at seeing things from a different perspective, as if his unusual upbringing adds something different to this.

“You wouldn’t,” is all she can think to say.

“Why not?” Luke asks, and he’s clearly challenging her now.

“Because he’s Clyde, your best friend. He’s a boy!”

“Yes, he is. Doesn’t matter to me,” Luke says. He rolls over so he can look at her. “I’d just love to fuck him. Do you put your finger in his arse when you blow him, like you do me? I bet he’s really tight.”

Rani has no idea where Luke learned to pitch his voice like that, but she can suddenly see it, see Clyde, sweaty, hard, on all fours, being fucked by Luke. They would look so good together. Clyde would lean down, his weight on his elbows, and go down on her. Just the thought makes her breathe heavier.

“Ask him,” Luke says, on his back again, looking at the ceiling as if nothing had happened. Rani shakes her head, but she knows she will anyway.

*

“Have you ever thought about having sex with another guy?” she asks Clyde. He raises an eyebrow.

“No,” he says.

“You’re lying,” Rani says. “You’re so lying!”

“Am I?” he says, but he doesn’t sound offended, so Rani presses on.

“You think about it sometimes. Getting fucked,” she says. “Having someone inside you, filling you up.”

Clyde is quiet, and Rani is afraid she’s stepped over one of the lines they have drawn up around this, whatever it is.

“Forget it,” she murmurs, but she doesn’t, and she’s sure he doesn’t either.

*

When she watches Clyde and Luke shoving each other around, playfully wrestling like boys do, she can’t help but think it’s not so playful. They’re too old, and the atmosphere is thick with innuendo, potential. She wonders which one of them will snap first, and if she hasn’t snapped already, a long time ago. She wants, wants so much, and she doesn’t know if she can ever have. She is greedy, and she wants them both for her own, but she is also generous. She wants to watch them together, wants to know that they have each other, too. She wants it to be the three of them, always. She wants to have a baby and not know who the father is until it’s born.

*

Sarah Jane is away on a job in Cardiff and they have the house to themselves. Rani thinks this is the perfect opportunity to force things to change. The status quo is driving her quietly insane, so she brings wine, in the hope that this will help things along.

In the evening they have drunk enough wine for Rani to be pleasantly buzzed. She’s sitting on the floor, between Clyde’s outstretched legs, and Luke is sitting opposite them.

“Do you ever think about it?” she asks. She can feel Clyde stiffen behind her, and a look at Luke tells her that he listens intently.

“Think about what?” Clyde asks, and she is sure he knows what she means.

“Us,” she says.

“Yes,” Luke answers at the same time Clyde says “no.” The room goes silent after that, and Rani realizes she has to do this on her own. Neither of the boys are going to be any help (as usual, a voice in her head says).

“I think about it,” she says. “I want it. Us. Not just now. Always.”

Luke smiles at her, and Clyde tightens his grip on her. She’s laid it out, now all she can do is hope they will too. Luke crawls closer, until he’s almost on top of her, and Rani is in the middle.

“Yes,” he whispers, and kisses her. Clyde goes still behind her, and Luke stops kissing her for a while to kiss Clyde instead. He lifts his arms from her, and it seems like he doesn’t know where to put them. After a while he puts one hand back on her waist, and one hand on Luke, and that is as good as an admission.

They don’t tumble into bed together after that, at least not for anything else than sleep. Baby steps, Rani thinks, and she’s fine with that.


End file.
